I'm adding this post to my memories because, seriously, almost everything you say here totally resonates with me, at least the way I'm reading it. The way I interact with people with whom I have drama, the compulsive-stabilizer role of an alpha, just about all of it.
It is probably not coincidental that whenever I think of myself as having an animal alter-ego, he's a big, dumb, golden retriever. ;) Nor is it coincidental, I guess, that Sequoia was convinced for a while that I was Asperger's. A psych eval disagreed with that assertion, but it's all on a spectrum, innit?
In any case, the main place I differ in my self-assessment from what you've said here is not so much in content as in tone. I never really thought of these traits as particularly unusual, and certainly not as maladaptive. They're just... the way I am, which has done me more good than harm, I think. Maybe I'm mis-interpreting the phenomena you describe, or maybe we've just had sufficiently different experiences, but I'd like to take the opportunity to confirm that you're def not the only person identifies with these behaviors, and that maybe it's not as weird, or problematic when compared to other ways of being, all of which have their problems, as you may be assuming. Don't beat yourself up too much with comparisons to some mythical "normal" human.
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Date: 2010-04-06 02:58 am (UTC)It is probably not coincidental that whenever I think of myself as having an animal alter-ego, he's a big, dumb, golden retriever. ;) Nor is it coincidental, I guess, that Sequoia was convinced for a while that I was Asperger's. A psych eval disagreed with that assertion, but it's all on a spectrum, innit?
In any case, the main place I differ in my self-assessment from what you've said here is not so much in content as in tone. I never really thought of these traits as particularly unusual, and certainly not as maladaptive. They're just... the way I am, which has done me more good than harm, I think. Maybe I'm mis-interpreting the phenomena you describe, or maybe we've just had sufficiently different experiences, but I'd like to take the opportunity to confirm that you're def not the only person identifies with these behaviors, and that maybe it's not as weird, or problematic when compared to other ways of being, all of which have their problems, as you may be assuming. Don't beat yourself up too much with comparisons to some mythical "normal" human.
And yes, you get biscuits. :)